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Sharjah Biennial Director Fired Over Artwork Deemed Offensive

By Randy Kennedy April 7, 2011 11:30 amApril 7, 2011 11:30 am

6:42 p.m. | Updated The Sharjah Biennial, a sprawling art event in the United Arab Emirates that began in 1993 and is now in the midst of its 10th iteration, has been celebrated as a pioneer in bringing ambitious contemporary art to the Middle East. But its delicate balancing act — allowing artists freedom of expression while respecting a host of cultural and religious sensitivities — seems to be proving harder to maintain.

Officials in Sharjah announced Wednesday that Jack Persekian, the director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, which runs the biennial, had been fired on orders from Sheik Sultan bin Muhammad al-Qasimi, the ruler of Sharjah, after numerous complaints from the public about an artwork in a public square that included sexually explicit Arabic slogans and poetry, some making reference to Allah.

The work, by an Algerian artist, Mustapha Benfodil, featured a large group of headless mannequins in what looked like soccer uniforms, some with wording printed on their shirts. As part of the work, graffiti in Arabic was also painted on the walls near the mannequins, which were arrayed in a courtyard near an important mosque in an area known as the Sharjah Heritage District.

In a statement, the Sharjah Art Foundation said that Mr. Persekian’s job was “no longer tenable” as a result of “the public outcry over the work.”

The statement added that the work was removed from the biennial “because leaving it on view was too risky from a legal and cultural standpoint.”

“It was very, very abrupt,” said Mr. Persekian, an American citizen of Armenian descent who grew up in the Palestinian part of Jerusalem and has run a gallery there for many years. “It completely knocked me over.” He added, of the artwork by Mr. Benfodil: “It was foolish of me, I had not looked at it carefully because I couldn’t, there were so many works and so many things to produce – films and books and publications and videos, a million things I didn’t go through. I’m not in the habit of checking everything, and people just didn’t like what they saw in that work and took it out on me personally.”

In a statement late Thursday, the biennial curators who chose Mr. Benfodil’s work defended Mr. Persekian, who was not involved in the selection of the piece, and said the installation was not intended to be offensive.

The curators, Rasha Salti and Haig Aivasian, said the words in the work “borrowed the voice of the victims of rape at the hands of religious extremists in Algeria – during the civil war that took place there throughout much of the nineties – who used religious texts to justify their crime.”

The statement continued: “It defies the silence of nameless and forgotten victims. The work is very specific to the Algerian context, and in no way was it meant as an attack on religion or Islam at large. We tried to make all of our selections with utmost responsibility and prudence. We see now that we misjudged the limits of the tone with which to address sensitive topics and the importance of carefully contextualizing art work.”